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Say Goodbye to Pharmaceutical Companies?

I watched a lecture today by a chemist who said that some day soon(no, he didn't say when, LOL), people will be able to PRINT their own medications. No, not the LABEL for the drugs, the drugs themselves!

A person would purchase some software, 'inks' and create his own medication. Would purchase the molecular formula for the medication, and then proceed to 'print' his own medication.

Kind of interesting.

One thing he left out, was what financial incentive would there be to do all the research and development, and get thru the federal drug approval process, if the pharm companies weren't selling the actual medication. I suppose some profit could be made selling the software, the molecular formula for the medication, the 'inks', and so on, but actually all the molecular formulas for all medication are public domain - so it would be a matter of selling the inks, the software.

Maybe I'm not understanding something. I'm having a hard time with this. How big are these machines? Are they only able to create small items? How finished does the finished product come out? How many ingredients are needed? All the ingredients are going to be available for basically anyone to purchase, at Target?

I don't think this is equivalent to down loading music and books, it sounds much more complicated.

I posted a video that answered all your questions. And I also stated that at this point, they are making little plastic things, and what you do is put in plastic, but there is not much of a barrier to making other things.

Right now it basically works like a playdoh creative station. You put in plastic, it shapes it, and spits out a Return of the Jedi Action Figure. Or a gear. Or an oven nob. Or a plastic chameleon.

Not very impressive, but again, this chemist stated there is no reason such a machine could not be set up to make - molecules. Medicines. Repair parts.

It's been used to make an ear, for example. A prosthetic ear.

Quoting KreatingMe:

Maybe I'm not understanding something. I'm having a hard time with this. How big are these machines? Are they only able to create small items? How finished does the finished product come out? How many ingredients are needed? All the ingredients are going to be available for basically anyone to purchase, at Target?

I don't think this is equivalent to down loading music and books, it sounds much more complicated.

Yep it would probably make it much easier for some nut case to replicate a dangerous virus and unleash it on everyone else. Pretty much any good advance in something can, after all, be used for evil as well. Not saying, however, that advances shouldn't be explored or made available just that they should be made available to the general public with caution.

I don't think they could do that easily - viruses are not just molecules - they are 'alive, sort of'. Viruses are very weird - almost like a crystal structure. They are very difficult to 'manufacture'(I mean outside of a host, in a way that allows distribution, etc).

Even if they could manufacture them, there are extremely severe problems with using viruses as biological weapons. They simply do not have the kind of viability that would allow such a thing - they'd have to be transported and distributed - there are huge problems with that.

A lot of things don't get used 'for evil', because there are gigantic technical barriers to doing so. Often the public has an extremely distorted idea of what is possible. Many things are impossible due to the innate limitations of the technology or the materials involved.

It would require a lot of cooperation from a virologist to even get CLOSE to developing that technology, and I think most of them would rather die than be used that way.

There are three powerful forces that prevent technology from being used for bad purposes.

One is stupidity. A very comforting thing about the world is, how stupid people are about such things. The knowledge it would take to do such a thing is concentrated in the hands of very few people.

The other is knowledge. Most people with the knowledge, can understand how something would be misused, and they will create unsurmountable obstacles to prevent that.

The third thing I already mentioned - there are innate limitations to materials like viruses, most of these limitations are 'the nature of the beast' and may never be surmounted.

But making a gear, or an oven knob, or even, a medication(which is not even 'sorta' alive and is far simpler than a virus), is a very different matter. And we aren't even there yet, but we might get there.

Yep it would probably make it much easier for some nut case to replicate a dangerous virus and unleash it on everyone else. Pretty much any good advance in something can, after all, be used for evil as well. Not saying, however, that advances shouldn't be explored or made available just that they should be made available to the general public with caution.

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